Wine-Drinking in New Testament Times

ROBERT H. STEIN

As evangelicals we maintain that the Bible is for us the
only infallible rule of faith and practice. It is our final authority in
all matters of doctrine (faith) and ethics (practice). Yet the Bible was
not written to evangelicals living in the twentieth century. The
science—or better, the art—of interpreting the biblical text so that the
revelation of God written centuries ago is meaningful and correctly
understood today is called “hermeneutics.” The basic principle of
hermeneutics, to be somewhat simplistic, is that the question “What does
it mean for us today?” must be preceded by the question “What did it mean
for them yesterday?” If we do not seek first to understand what the text
meant when it was written, it will be very difficult to interpret
intelligently what it means and demands of us today.

My subject here is the
use of the term “wine” in the New Testament. Some readers may already be
thinking, “Is he going to try to tell us that wine in the Bible means
grape juice? Is he going to try to say that the wine mentioned in the New
Testament is any different from the wine bottled today by Christian
Brothers or Château Lafite-Rothschild or Mogen David?” Well, my answers
are no and yes. No, the wine of the Bible was not unfermented grape juice.
Yes, it was different from the wine of today.

In ancient times wine was
usually stored in large pointed jugs called amphorae. When wine was
to be used it was poured from the amphorae into large bowls called
kraters, where it was mixed with water. Last year 1 had the
privilege of visiting the great archaeological museum in Athens, Greece,
where I saw dozens of these large kraters. At the time it did not
dawn on me what their use signified about the drinking of wine in biblical
times. From these kraters, cups or kylix were then filled. What is
important for us to note is that before wine was drunk it was mixed with
water. The kylix were filled not from the amphorae but from
the kraters.

The ratio of water to
wine varied. Homer (Odyssey IX,
208f.) mentions a ratio of 20 to 1, twenty parts water to one part
wine. Pliny (Natural History XIV,
vi, 54) mentions a ratio of eight parts water to one part
wine. In one ancient work, Athenaeus’s
The Learned Banquet, written around A.D.200, we find in Book Ten a collection of statements from
earlier writers about drinking practices. A quotation from a play by
Aristophanes reads: “‘Here, drink this also, mingled three and two.’
Demus.
‘Zeus! But it’s sweet and bears the three parts well!’” The
poet Euenos, who lived in the fifth century B.C., is also quoted:

The best measure of wine is neither much nor very little;For ‘tis the cause of either grief or madness.It pleases the wine to be the fourth, mixed with three nymphs.

Here
the ratio of water to wine is 3 to 1. Others mentioned are:

3 to 1—Hesiod4 to 1—Alexis2 to 1—Diodes3 to 1—Ion5 to 2—Nichochares2 to 1—Anacreon

Sometimes
the ratio goes down to 1 to 1 (and even lower), but it should be noted
that such a mixture is referred to as “strong wine.” Drinking wine
unmixed, on the other hand, was looked upon as a “Scythian” or barbarian
custom. Athenaeus in this work quotes Mnesitheus of Athens:

The gods has revealed wine to
mortals, to be the greatest blessing for those who use it aright, but for
those who use it without measure, the reverse. For it gives food to them
that take it and strength in mind and body. In medicine it is most
beneficial; it can be mixed with liquid and drugs and it brings aid to the
wounded. In daily intercourse, to those who mix and drink it moderately,
it gives good cheer; but if you overstep the bounds, it brings violence.
Mix it half and half, and you get madness; unmixed, bodily collapse.

It is
evident that wine was seen in ancient times as a medicine (and as a
solvent for medicines) and of course as a beverage. Yet as a beverage it
was always thought of as a mixed drink. Plutarch (Symposiacs III,
ix), for instance, states. “We call a mixture ‘wine,’ although the larger
of the component parts is water.” The ratio of water might vary, but only
barbarians drank it unmixed, and a mixture of wine and water of equal
parts was seen as “strong drink” and frowned upon. The term “wine” or
oinos in the ancient world, then, did not mean wine as we understand
it today but wine mixed with water. Usually a writer simply referred to
the mixture of water and wine as “wine.” To indicate that the beverage was
not a mixture of water and wine he would say “unmixed (akratesteron)
wine.”

One might wonder whether
the custom of mixing wine with water was limited to the ancient Greeks.
The burden of proof would be upon anyone who argued that the pattern of
drinking wine in Jewish society was substantially different from that of
the examples already ‘given. And we do have examples in both Jewish and
Christian literature and perhaps in the Bible that wine was likewise
understood as being a mixture of wine and water. In several instances in
the Old Testament a distinction is made between “wine” and “strong drink.”
In Leviticus 10:8, 9, we read, “And the
LORD spoke to Aaron, saying, ‘Drink no wine nor strong drink,
you nor your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting. . . .‘“
Concerning the Nazarite vow Numbers 6:3 states that the Nazarite “shall
separate himself from wine and strong drink.” This distinction is found
also in Deuteronomy 14:26; 29:6; Judges 13:4, 7, 14; First Samuel 1:15:
Proverbs 20:1; 31:4,6: Isaiah 5:11, 22; 28:7; 29:9; 56:12;
and Micah 2:11.

The 1901 Jewish
Encyclopedia (Vol. 12, p. 533) states that in the rabbinic
period at least “‘yayin’ [or wine] ‘is to be distinguished from ‘shekar’
[or strong drink]: the former is diluted with water (mazug’); the latter
is undiluted (‘yayin hal’).” ln the Talmud, which contains the oral
traditions of Judaism from about 200 B.C.to A.D.200, there
are several tractates in which the mixture of water and wine is discussed.
One tractate (Shabbath 77a) states that wine that does not carry three
parts of water well is not wine. The normal mixture is said to consist of
two parts water to one part wine. In a most important reference (Pesahim
108b) it is stated that the four cups every Jew was to drink during the
Passover ritual were to be mixed in a ratio of three parts water to one
part wine. From this we can conclude with a fair degree of certainty that
the fruit of the vine used at the institution of the Lord’s Supper was a
mixture of three parts water to one part wine. In another Jewish reference
from around 60 B.C.we read,
“It is harmful to drink wine alone, or again, to drink water alone, while
wine mixed with water is sweet and delicious and enhances one’s enjoyment”
(II Maccabees 15:39).

In ancient times there
were not many beverages that were safe to drink. The danger of drinking
water alone raises another point. There were several ways in which the
ancients could make water safe to drink. One method was boiling, but this
was tedious and costly. Different methods of filtration were tried. The
safest and easiest method of making the water safe to drink, however, was
to mix it with wine. The drinking of wine (i.e., a mixture of water and
wine) served therefore as a safety measure, since often the water
available was not safe. (I remember drinking some water in Salonica,
Greece, that would have been much better for me had it been mixed with
wine or some other purifying agent.)

When we come to the New
Testament the content of the wine is never discussed. The burden of proof,
however, is surely upon anyone who would say that the “wine” of the New
Testament is substantially different from the wine mentioned by the
Greeks, the Jews during the intertestamental period, and the early church
fathers. In the writings of the early church fathers it is clear that
“wine” means wine mixed with water. Justin Martyr around A.D.150 described the Lord’s Supper in this way: “Bread is brought,
and wine and water, and the president sends up prayers and thanksgiving”
(Apology 1, 67, 5). Some sixty-five years later Hippolytus
instructed the bishops that they shall “eucharistize [bless] first the
bread into the representation of the Flesh of Christ; and the cup mixed
with wine for the antitype of the Blood which was shed for all who have
believed in Him” (Apostolic Tradition XXIII, 1). Cyprian around
A.D.250 stated in his
refutation of certain heretical practices:

Nothing must be done by us but what
the Lord first did on our behalf, as that the cup which is offered in
remembrance of Him should be offered mingled with wine. . . .

Thus, therefore, in considering the
cup of the Lord, water alone cannot be offered, even as wine alone cannot
be offered. For if anyone offer wine only, the blood of Christ is
dissociated from us: but if the water be alone, the people are dissociated
from Christ. . . . Thus the cup of the Lord is not indeed water alone, nor
wine alone, unless each be mingled with the other [Epistle LXII, 2,
11 and 13].

Unmixed
wine and plain water at the Lord’s Supper were both found unacceptable. A
mixture of wine and water was the norm. Earlier in the latter part of the
second century Clement of Alexandria stated:

It is best for the wine to be mixed
with as much water as possible. . . . For both are works of God, and the
mixing of the two, both of water and wine produces health, because life
is composed of a necessary element and a useful element. To the
necessary element, the water, which is in the greatest quantity, there
is to be mixed in some of the useful element [Instructor II, ii,
23.3—24.1].

To
consume the amount of alcohol that is in two martinis by drinking wine
containing three parts water to one part wine, one would have to drink
over twenty-two glasses. In other words, it is possible to become
intoxicated from wine mixed with three parts of water, but one’s drinking
would probably affect the bladder long before it affected the mind.

In concluding this brief
article I would like to emphasize two points. First, it is important to
try to understand the biblical text in the context in which it was
written. Before we ask “What does the biblical text mean for us today?” we
must ask “What did it mean to them originally?” Second, there is a
striking difference between the drinking of alcoholic beverages today and
the drinking of wine in New Testament times. If the drinking of unmixed
wine or even wine mixed in a ratio of one to one with water was frowned
upon in ancient times, certainly the drinking of distilled spirits in
which the alcoholic content is frequently three to ten times greater would
be frowned upon a great deal more.

Robert H. Stein is associate professor of New Testament at Bethel
College, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has the B.D. from Fuller Seminary,
S.T.M. from Andover Newton Theological School, and Ph.D. from
Princeton Seminary.